“Marjan! She did it to keep you from the Sultan. He was killing a wife every night. He vowed to keep it up forever. And you were her beautiful little girl, and she wasn’t going to be there to protect you.”
I knew she did it to protect me. I knew that. But if she had been strong, she would have found another way. If she had been clever and brave, like Shahrazad. If she hadn’t given up. Many mothers sent their daughters away over the green hills with Abu Muslem. Many mothers escaped and took their daughters with them. But my mother maimed me, and then drank poison and died.
I knew she did it to protect me. But I would never forgive her for it. I couldn’t.
“She should have been strong,” I said, and I could hear the coldness in my voice.
Zaynab was shaking her head. Tears were streaming down her face. “This is hard, my dear,” she said. “This is very, very hard.”
Chapter 14
The Oil jar
LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING
Stories are thick with meanings. You can fall in love with a story for what you think it says, but you can’t know for certain where it will lead your listeners. If you’re telling a tale to teach children to be generous, they may fix instead on the part where your hero hides in an olive oil jar, then spend the whole next day fighting about who gets to try it first.
People take what they need from the stories they hear. The tale is often wiser than the teller.
I slept uneasily that night, jolted awake by the slightest sounds: whispers of footsteps outside my door, hushed voices, a child’s cry from some far-off corner of the harem. And then came a soft knocking, which at first seemed part of a dream, but was still there when the dream had melted away.
Footsteps, fading to silence.
I rolled up my pallet and groped through darkness toward the doorway, until my foot kicked something soft and lumpy. I leaned down, touched it, ran it through my hands to feel the shape of it. A coarse veil. Good.
I dressed then, by feel, except for my sandals, which I held because they would make too much noise. Pulling aside the curtain, I had just enough light to see the shape of a sleeping woman on the floor.
Not sleeping. Drugged. Someone—maybe the one who had knocked—had given her sharbat laced with a sleeping potion. That had been part of the plan.
I bent down, peered into her face. Soraya.
I stole down the stairs and into the courtyard below.
The harem was dark, lit only by a milky moonlight glow that seeped in through the window grills. Shapes loomed before me, just thickenings in the gloom until, as I came near, they sharpened into familiar things: a pillar, a fountain, an urn.
I had memorized the way. Through the courtyard with the blue fountain, down a flight of stairs, through the corridor with the black-and-white-tiled floor, up again to the courtyard with the gold-inlaid ceiling. Then more corridors and more stairs—going down and down and down until I was blind with darkness, but my nose pricked to life with the smell of kitchen spices. Turn right through a narrow doorway; feel for the flint on the table, feel for the lamp.
Light bloomed up before me, illuminating the place where I stood. A storeroom. Crates and baskets and bulging burlap bags were stacked against three walls. A row of huge ceramic jars stood along the fourth—with three tall leather olive oil jars at one end. Two, I saw, had been marked with white chalk.
I had heard, in the old tales, of people hiding inside empty olive oil jars. But the tales never said how they did it. I took off my veil and then, as quietly as I could, dragged some crates in front of one of the marked jars. I stacked them up like stairs, until the highest one came nearly to the lip of the jar. I put on my sandals, then set my veil and the lamp on the uppermost crate. Looking down, I could see that the seam in the leather jar had been taken apart at the top, so I could slip easily through the neck.
I sat on the crate, dangled my feet into the jar. Once in, I wouldn’t be able to get back out. Not without help. I took a deep breath, blew out the lamp, then slid down inside the jar. My hips caught, but I pulled at the loosened seam and wriggled through.
It was slick and oily and reeked of olives. When I stood up straight, the top of my head—to my eyes—poked through the neck of the jar. Later, I would have to crouch. I reached one arm up through the opening and, finding my veil, pulled it down through the hole and wrapped it around me.
I stood waiting in the dark.
The bad thing about waiting is that your mind has nothing to do. So then it thinks of things to do—to terrify you. My mind kept sending me pictures of the Khatun, and then the fear would come welling up inside me, and it would be hard to breathe.
What if somebody came into the storeroom with a lamp and saw the stacked crates? What if they found me, and then told the Khatun?
I gave myself something else to think about. The plan, what we had to do.
Ayaz. He was supposed to look for me twice a day at the fountain in the carpet bazaar. And I was sure that he would—because of the dinars. He was probably living there now, searching for me, dreaming his greedy little dreams. I went over what I would say to him and to the storyteller.
After a while, my shoulder began to itch. Then my bad foot began to throb, and my leg was cramping up. I had just started to stretch, to push one arm up through the neck of the jar, when I heard the call to morning prayer. I couldn’t pray properly in this jar. Later, I would make it up.
Now was the dangerous time. People would be stirring. They might finish their prayers before Dunyazad came.
Soon, I heard the pad of bare footsteps, coming near. Was it Dunyazad? I crouched down into the jar and, looking up, saw light flickering across the ceiling.
They were in here now, the footsteps. I heard a gritty, scraping sound. Someone was moving the crates, scooting them across the floor. It must be Dunyazad!
“Dunyazad?” I said softly.
The scraping sound stopped. Quiet. Please be Dunyazad, I thought. The scrapes started up again.
Cold fear gathered around my heart. Why didn’t she say something? Why didn’t she answer?
Suddenly, a second, lighter set of footsteps, coming fast. The heavier footsteps thudded twice, then were silent. A swish of fabric, a murmur, and then, “Marjan!” came a whispered voice. “Stay down. Take this.”
Dunyazad!
Something flat and round appeared above the hole, blocking the flickering light. The bottom of a wicker bird basket. I squatted down as far as I could, guided the basket through the neck of the jar and into the widest part.
Please don’t coo, I thought. I breathed in the dusty scent of feathers, mingled with the smell of olive oil. I could feel something moving, could hear the pigeons’ feet making scratchy noises. But no cooing.
More thumps and footsteps and scraping noises. Then a huff of breath; the flickering light went black. There came the faintest rustle of fabric, then the retreating pad pad padding of the first, heavy footsteps again.
And now the harem was coming to life. I heard women’s voices, a shuffling of many slippered footfalls, a feverish din of clangs and bumps and scrapings. My legs had begun to ache from crouching, but I didn’t dare stand. I found that if I set my body in a certain way, I could wedge myself into the contours of the jar, with my shins resting against one part of it and my seat against another and the bird basket hugged to my breast.
I waited for the call to withdraw, which would tell the women to leave when the merchant’s men came to deliver the oil. And waited. I began to think that Dunyazad was wrong—that the oil merchant wouldn’t come today, that we would be trapped in these jars until nightfall.
Suddenly, “Withdraw!” I heard. The high, reedy voice of a eunuch. “Withdraw! Withdraw!” There was a flurry of pattering footfalls, and then silence.
Male voices. I could hear them now in the distance—and the clatter of mules’ hooves. Heavy, boot-shod footsteps coming near. Something scraped against my jar and then I heard—I almost felt—the sound of a body
pressed against the jar.
An exhaled breath, just above me. My scalp prickled. I kept my head bowed, but whoever it was could look straight down at my veil. The jar heaved up. I was moving. I braced myself, holding my veil with one hand and the bird basket with the other, pressing my legs and back against the jar.
I couldn’t help . . . picturing. . . who it was that carried the jar. He must be strong. I imagined the young eunuch, the one who had smiled at me. He didn’t falter, but carried me smoothly outside—I knew it was outside from the brightness that cast shadows into the jar and warmed the top of my head.
My jar lurched suddenly upward, and one of the pigeons let out a sharp coo. I held my breath. Had anyone heard?
A creaking sound. The leather straps of the jar harness? Shahrazad had told me that Dunyazad and I would be carried on either side of the same mule in the oil merchant’s caravan.
A shout—some distance away. Then more creakings and the hollow clop of hooves on pavement. Now I was moving again, swaying gently. I heard the rhythmic swish of the jar rubbing against the side of the mule.
I ventured a look up; the circle of pale early morning sky joggled above. I could see pieces of buildings, but I couldn’t tell which ones they were. A pigeon flew overhead, then a shoulder swam into view, the back of someone’s head. I ducked down again.
After a time, we stopped. The mules stomped and blew; their harnesses creaked. Now, footfalls. Voices.
“Wait. I’ll get these!” The voice was so near, it startled me. It was deep—not a eunuch’s voice. “My nephew needs two leather jars. Keep them on the mule, and I’ll have Majeed drive them over.”
We began moving again. When we stopped this time, I peered up through the hole and saw a rough wattle roof. The scents of fur and hay and manure drifted into the jar, overpowering the oil smell and the bird smell.
Footfalls. I ducked my head. Creaking noises. All at once the jar plunged downward, and now I felt firm ground beneath my feet. Not for long. The jar was laid gently on its side; the pigeons cooed, flapping and scrabbling about. I wound up on my back with the pigeon basket above me.
Then a man’s voice, near and quiet and low. “Wait. Don’t come out now. I don’t want to see you. Count to ten slowly, then leave by the stable yard door.”
Chapter 15
Just a Friend
LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING
There are many different worlds inside a city. The world of the rich and the world of beggars. The world of men and the world behind the veil. The worlds of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews.
If you are a rich woman living inside a harem, the world of a poor Christian beggarman is as foreign as China or Abyssinia.
All the worlds touch at the bazaar. And the other place where they touch is in stories. Shahrazad crossed borders all the time, telling tales of country women and Bedouin sheikhs, of poor fishermen and scheming sultanas, of Jewish doctors and Christian brokers, of India and China and the lands of the jinn.
If we don’t share our stories—trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk—we will all be strangers forever.
“What is that terrible stench?”
Dunyazad brushed hay off her clothes while I finished wriggling out of my jar.
I didn’t smell any stench. Just ordinary stable smells and a hint of the street.
“Hurry, Marjan! Come along!”
I put on my veil and then, with my free hand, righted my bird basket, which I had pushed out of the jar before me. The pigeons fluttered and cooed indignantly. “Are you all right, little birds?” I asked softly. I peered inside; none seemed to be injured. So I snatched up the basket by the ring at the top and followed Dunyazad across the barnyard. She was already fumbling with the latch on the heavy wooden gate. She pulled the gate open, picked up her basket, stepped outside—then stopped.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. I looked beyond her into a stream of people and animals: a ragged goat boy and his bleating flock, two men on camels, a fisherman lugging two sloshing pails, a carter, a woman with a stack of flat-bread balanced on her head, a band of shouting street urchins pestering a man toting a basketful of oranges. The smells and the din, muted in the courtyard, now clashed in my nose and ears.
“What’s the matter?” I asked again, but Dunyazad only stared. “Look out!” I grabbed Dunyazad’s elbow and yanked her back out of the path of a donkey cart. The driver lurched to one side, cursing at her. She cried out sharply, her eyes snapping with anger. “How dare he!” she said. “How dare he!”
“Dunyazad—stop!” I said. Quickly I straightened my veil, which had slipped when I let go to grab her. Now I felt like shaking her. I would have, too, if she hadn’t been bigger than me . . . and a princess. “What’s the matter?” I asked for the third time. Then all at once I knew. She’d never been out of the harem. She’d never smelled air that wasn’t perfumed. She’d never been around so many people all at once.
Dunyazad peered out at the street again. “Where do we go now?” She sounded uncertain—so unlike her usual self.
“This way,” I said. “To the fountain to wait for Ayaz.” I led her into the street, merging into the flow of people moving toward the bazaar. I wished I had a free hand to pull her along behind me, as she had done in the dark passageways in the harem. I kept looking back, calling out things for her to watch out for—a cart coming from behind, a pile of dung, an overloaded porter cutting across the current.
“Are we almost there?” she asked.
“Do you see those domed roofs? That’s the bazaar!”
We came in at the portal by the brass bazaar, then wove through it to the mahogany bazaar, then the cotton sellers’ bazaar. Often, I had to wait for Dunyazad, who gaped like a visitor from another world. When I began to feel impatient, I reminded myself that this was another world—to her. Once, I had to stop her from giving a gold dinar to a skin-and-bones beggar boy with flies buzzing around his eyes. “But he’s hungry!” she said.
“If you give that to him, we’ll have every beggar in the bazaar swarming around us and we’ll never get the rest of the tale.”
She put the coin away. “I just want to feed him,” she said. “What will he do if no one feeds him?”
I handed the boy a copper fils, thinking, same as they all do. Same as they’ve done forever. Same as they would always do, unless the sultans and rich people opened their coffers. And there was little chance of that.
At last we came to the fountain. The man with the trained monkey was there again. I looked about for Ayaz, but he was nowhere to be found. “Now we wait,” I told Dunyazad.
“Are you certain he’ll come?”
I nodded, trying to seem sure of myself. Of course he would! I’d seen his eyes when he looked at those dinars.
Dunyazad drew forward, watching the monkey perform. I stayed back a little way, so I could look over the crowd in the bazaar. I saw a boy walking by with a drum, and another lugging a bulging burlap sack for an old woman. I saw a boy climbing up a huge pile of folded carpets, as if he were scaling a mountain. A merchant pointed and yelled at him. The boy tugged at a carpet in the pile until it came loose, then tossed it down to the man.
No Ayaz.
After a while, the man with the trained monkey picked up his bowlful of coins, signaled for the monkey to leap onto his shoulder, and left.
Dunyazad looked at me. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Where was Ayaz?
What if he had come already, before we had arrived? What if he didn’t come again until late afternoon? That would ruin our plans. That would be dangerous, because the Khatun would discover that we’d gone.
“Sister?”
I turned around and there was Ayaz, grinning his impish grin. “Who is your friend?” he asked.
“You don’t need to know,” I said quickly, trying to stop Dunyazad from blurting out her name. “Just take us to the storyteller.”
“What are the birds for?” Ayaz ask
ed, not moving.
I had a terrible thought, then. Pigeon pie.
“Not for you,” I said crossly. “Let’s go.”
Ayaz held out his hand, still grinning.
I sighed. “We’ve been through this before! I’ll pay you when we get there. Four copper fils.”
He looked hurt. “Have I displeased you so much, Lady, that you would cut my wage from gold to copper?”
“I didn’t have the right change before. Now I do.”
“But now there are two of you. It’s twice as much work. So my fee has gone up to two gold dinars.”
“Two gold dinars?” I whispered, furious. “I’ll find him myself, then.”
He shrugged. “You’re welcome to try. But if she—” he nodded at Dunyazad—“is as fine a lady as my nose tells me she is, you’re lucky I’m not charging you three.”
Perfume. Dunyazad was wearing perfume! Expensive perfume. I could smell it now—that smell like rain—though I hadn’t noticed it before.
“Two silver dirhams, when we get there. That’s my last offer.”
He shook his head. “Gold,” he said. “Two of them.”
And then, so quickly I didn’t have time to stop her, Dunyazad set down her birds, plucked two dinars from her sash, and handed them to Ayaz. “Thank you, gracious lady!” he said. He grinned at me, then whirled round and dived into the crowd.
I set off—running—after him, my pigeon basket bumping against my legs. “You shouldn’t have done that!” I said over my shoulder to Dunyazad. “Now he’s probably gone for good!” I didn’t care if she was a princess. She had ruined everything!
“Two dinars is nothing,” she said, close behind me. “We don’t have time to haggle.”
“You might as well come right out and tell him who you are, then,” I said. “Nobody can afford to pay that much. And even if they could, they wouldn’t. And now that he’s got what he wants from us, hell just leave!”
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